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Soldier of Fortune
Soldier of Fortune This article concerns the first-person shooter. For the SNES and Genesis game Soldiers of Fortune, see The Chaos Engine.Soldier of Fortune (also known as SoF) is a first-person shooter game created by Raven Software and published by Activision on March 27, 2000 for Microsoft Windows. It uses a modified id Tech 2 game engine. It was later released on the PlayStation 2 as well as the Dreamcast, while Loki Software also made a port for Linux. Two sequels were later made to the game as well. Story The story involves the theft of nuclear weapons, and the main enemy turns out to be an Afrikaner Neo-Nazi group based in Germany, led by Sergei Dekker. At the beginning of the game, terrorists steal four nuclear weapons from a storage facility in Russia, and proceed to sell them to various nations. This is a prelude to the acquisition of advanced weapons of mass destruction by this terrorist group. John Mullins, working for a U.S.-based mercenary ("soldier of fortune") organization known only as "The Shop", and his partner, Aaron "Hawk" Parsons, are assigned to prevent the nukes from falling into the wrong hands, and stop the terrorists in their plans. Game play Soldier of Fortune was best known for its graphic depictions of firearms dismembering the human body. This graphic violence is the game's main stylistic attraction, much like the destructible environments of Red Faction or bullet time of Max Payne. The GHOUL engine enables depiction of extreme graphic violence, in which character models are based on body parts that can each independently sustain damage (gore zones). There are 26 zones in total. A shot to the head with a powerful gun will often make the target's head explode, leaving nothing but the bloody stump of the neck remaining; a close-range shot to the stomach with a shotgun will leave an enemy's bowels in a bloody mess, and a shot to the nether regions will cause the victims to clutch their groin in agony for a few seconds before keeling over dead. It is possible to shoot off an enemy's limbs (head, arms, legs) leaving nothing left but a bloody torso. In the last mission there is also a fictional microwave weapon, causing the enemies to fry or explode, depending on the firing mode. However, nonviolence is a possibility, if the player is a good shot it is possible to shoot an enemy's weapon out of their hand, causing them to cower on the floor to surrender. The game also came with password-protected options to disable all gore and there is even a version of the game with the extreme violence permanently locked-out, called Soldier of Fortune: Tactical Low-Violence Version. Reception Soldier of Fortune was praised as being a solid and entertaining shooter, with one of the game's greatest praises being its graphic depiction of gore and violence, which both proponents and detractors consider to be more realistic than most first-person shooter games. “ Shoot someone in the foot, they hop around for a moment yelping in pain. Shoot someone in the throat, they grasp at their throat, gurgle, and fall to the floor. They don't always die, however. I walked around one room for five minutes trying to figure out where a soft slurping sound was coming from only to find that one of my targets was on the floor, alive, yet gurgling softly through a hole in his throat. Nice touch. You can even shoot the gun from someone's hands if your aim is good enough.” ”— J. Neil Doane, Linux Journal